I admit to coming from a medical education background, where, as Janette
said, 'remedial' is an acceptable term.
Certainly we can't expect all students to be 'HE ready' - they come into
HE to learn HE skills, and unfamiliarity should not be treated as
deficit in any way. Helping those students is not, to my mind, what is
meant by the 'remediation part of LD'.
But it is also true that many of those 'unfamiliar' students typically
do not seek help until they run into serious academic difficulty,
perhaps failing courses - it is not too uncommon in certain science
disciplines for students to have to repeat courses or re-sit exams.
For those students, focus on academic skills (through content) is
frequently transformative because they are in situations where they are
more ready to accept help and desire improvement.
So, Kay, whether we call it 'remedial' or find another term, it turns
out to be rewarding work - no need for apprehension.
Kal Winston
Cynghorwr Astudio / Study Adviser
Canolfan Sgiliau Astudio / Study Skills Centre
Ystafell 202 / Room 202
Y Brif Lyfrgell / Main Arts Library
Ffordd y Coleg / College Road
Prifysgol Bangor / Bangor University
Bangor
Gwynedd
LL57 2DF
Ffôn/phone: 01248 38 2906
E-bost/e-mail: [log in to unmask]
Gwefan/website: sgiliauastudio.bangor.ac.uk / studyskills.bangor.ac.uk
***********************************************************
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yn unig. Mae'n cynnwys gwybodaeth a allai fod yn gyfrinachol
ac a allai hefyd fod yn freiniol. Os nad chi yw'r sawl y
cyfeiriwyd y neges ato (neu os nad oes gennych awdurdod i'w
derbyn ar ran y sawl y cyfeiriwyd hi ato) ni chewch ei chopïo
na'i datgelu i neb arall.
This transmission is intended for the named addressee only.
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Norman, Kay wrote:
> My first post ---- a newbie
>
> Dear Jeanette
>
> I wholeheartedly agree with you; how are they supposed to 'be able to do' or 'know' something that they have never been introduced to before. So many mature learners come forward embarrassed that they don't have certain 'academic skills' (actually, most of the younger learners don't either, but they aren't reflective enough to realise and admit to that until later on in the course.. another story!) that they can apply successfully to the different modules and assessments they face.
>
> They are the ones I've got such reward seeing 'transform' as they so often already have life skills to realise that they are 'lacking' something and endeavour to fill the gap. Just showing them how to apply reflective/critical skills to their studies transforms their whole approach and understanding of HE and their role within it.
>
> I am currently in the situation where I may (through force of numbers) have to focus on the 'remedial' rather than coach the self-selecting, and I'm a little apprehensive....
>
> Kay
> Study Coach
> Anglia Ruskin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: learning development in higher education network [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Janette Myers
> Sent: 04 June 2013 11:13
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: hhhmmm?
>
> Dear Kal,
> this is a really interesting point which kept me occupied on my new exercise regime which involves walking to a much further tube station!
> I think you're right in that part of my problem with 'remedial' is that I simply don't like it, it is a knee jerk reaction. It has all sorts of connotations which a background in adult ed brings up. It's used a lot in medical education and also in dealing with doctors whose performance is sub standard. (incidentally it's interesting that the discourse around underperforming doctors is around identification in order to remediate, whereas that around underperforming teachers is of identification in order to sack- but that's another story) However, I would take issue that difference in what people are able to do leads to remediation issues. I think that many of the things students have to do in HE are new, we wouldn't expect them to have acquired high level criticality through pre HE study, or knowledge about certain discipline areas and we wouldn't expect them to have certain practical skills, such as suturing. This doesn't make them 'remedial', but 'lacks' in other areas d
o, and I don't know how or why we choose those areas as the ones we expect them to already know, but not others. At the very least we should be able to clearly articulate that and we by and large don't. Does it make a difference in an Eng lit course if students are already familiar with texts? Does being unfamiliar make you remedial? Does not knowing that you don't just talk about what you liked and hated in a text make you remedial? What is the role of the programme of study in conveying a body of knowledge production and outcomes?
>
> I'm starting to burble now, so will stop. Many thanks for posing such a provocative question Regards Janette
>
>
>
> On 03/06/2013 16:51, [log in to unmask] wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I'm also relatively new to this list, and enjoy the conversations and
>> resource sharing.
>> I agree that this article makes good points, and with the sentiments
>> about the embedded, metacognitive and transformative nature of the work.
>> I have a question though.
>> I'm guessing that most would agree that some students are in more
>> needed of learning development than others - some are already
>> competently reflective, self-regulatory, critical learners; others are
>> less so.
>> So surely, the remedial piece is a part of LD work. Not all, clearly,
>> but surely 'remediation' is a term that shouldn't be considered a
>> dirty word, isn't it? After all, helping those students who have
>> encountered barriers they struggle to overcome, or who have failed
>> courses, is perhaps the most challenging and interesting aspect of
>> learning development work. And if we don't help them, who will?
>> Why is it so common to deny the remedial part of LD?
>>
>> Really curious,
>>
>> Kal Winston
>>
>> Study Adviser,
>> Bangor University
>>
>> Quoting Janette Myers <[log in to unmask]>:
>>
>>> Thanks for circulating this Gordon. I thought it a very positive
>>> piece, making some succinct key points. It will be of use to me in
>>> supporting some of the things I try to convey about embedding,
>>> metacognition and the non-remedial (and transformative Sandra!)
>>> nature of LD
>>> regards
>>> Janette
>>>
>>> On 03/06/2013 13:11, Gordon Asher wrote:
>>>> *Raising awareness of best-practice pedagogy*
>>>>
>>>> 30 MAY 2013
>>>>
>>>> Graham Gibbs asks what ‘study skills’ consist of and whether they
>>>> can actually be learned by students
>>>>
>>>> http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/raising-awareness-of-best-practice-pedagogy/2004204.article
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> SOURCE: *ALAMY*
>>>> <http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/raising-awareness-of-best-practice-pedagogy/2004204.article>
>>>>
>>>> Tunnel vision: giving students ‘how-to’ guides to learning does not
>>>> encourage the kind of flexible thinking that is required to get the
>>>> most out of higher education
>>>>
>>>> When I was at The Open University in the 1970s, I tried to teach
>>>> adults who were studying for the first time in their lives what they
>>>> needed to do in order to learn effectively. When I was based at
>>>> Oxford Polytechnic (now Oxford Brookes University) in the 1980s, I
>>>> was teaching students whose study habits had got them through their
>>>> A levels but were unequal to the larger and more complex tasks of
>>>> higher education. And when I later worked at the University of
>>>> Oxford, students were still asking for help with “study skills”.
>>>> Their intelligence and achievements were intimidating, so what was
>>>> the problem?
>>>>
>>>> The educational interventions that make most difference to student
>>>> performance are not to do with improving teachers or curricula, and
>>>> certainly not with policy or organisational changes, but involve
>>>> improving students: changing what it is they do in order to learn.
>>>> For example, teachers can often help students more by encouraging
>>>> them to tackle feedback differently than by altering the feedback
>>>> itself.
>>>>
>>>> So what does “improving students” actually consist of? “How to”
>>>> guides on study skills – how to take notes, how to structure an
>>>> essay and so on – contain what appears to be sound enough advice
>>>> (although the similarity between them is both striking and
>>>> suspicious).
>>>>
>>>> However, attempts to back up this consensus with evidence of the
>>>> effectiveness of the techniques described have had little success.
>>>> Students’ scores on “study habits inventories” – questionnaires made
>>>> up of lists of the kinds of things contained in these books – hardly
>>>> correlate with examination performance at all. An exception is how
>>>> to be organised (by managing one’s time, for example).
>>>> “Organisation” predicts performance where the use of most “skills”
>>>> does not.
>>>>
>>>> Students also rarely use the methods they read about in how-to-study
>>>> books or are taught on study skills courses, and for all kinds of
>>>> reasons. Most importantly, the skills may be too rigid to span the
>>>> range of demands that students actually face.
>>>>
>>>> For example, lectures may primarily convey facts, or explain
>>>> procedures, or exemplify the use of the discourse of the discipline,
>>>> and so on. Each requires a different kind of note-taking, and
>>>> students have to be able to spot these varied demands and do
>>>> something different in response, not simply use the same methods
>>>> every time. Disciplines also vary in their demands and conventions:
>>>> a student studying sociology and history may find that their
>>>> writing gains good marks in one but not the other.
>>>>
>>>> *Fit for purpose*
>>>>
>>>> It appears that successful students (and successful academics for
>>>> that matter) do an extraordinary variety of things when they take
>>>> notes or set about writing. They have found, often through trial and
>>>> error, idiosyncratic ways that work well enough for them, given
>>>> their purposes and the particular learning tasks in front of them.
>>>>
>>>> It is possible to train students to use specific technical skills,
>>>> but they transfer very poorly from one context to another (for
>>>> example, from a training course back to everyday study, or from
>>>> studying one subject to another). It is much better, instead, to
>>>> develop a learner’s ability to study a subject within that subject.
>>>>
>>>> For example, efforts at some Ivy League universities to improve
>>>> students’ writing by hiring experts in communication who run generic
>>>> courses in how to write have tended to be abandoned. Instead,
>>>> postgraduates within subjects are trained to give feedback on
>>>> assignments that leads students to reflect on their writing, rather
>>>> than only on the content of the assignment.
>>>>
>>>> When I acted as a “study skills counsellor” at Oxford Polytechnic, I
>>>> noticed that many of the bewildered students in my caseload were
>>>> unable to describe what they did when they were studying (such as
>>>> reading a chapter in a book, for example). Their studying was
>>>> habitual and unreflective. In contrast, effective students can tell
>>>> you all about how they go about their task, have a sensible
>>>> rationale for doing so and change what they do when they notice that
>>>> the context or task demands are different.
>>>>
>>>> In the educational literature, this is termed “metacognitive
>>>> awareness and control”, and it is the most influential of all
>>>> aspects of “study skills”. Improving students appears to involve
>>>> raising their awareness of what they are doing, increasing their
>>>> repertoire so that they can choose to do different things when it
>>>> seems appropriate and tuning them in to task demands so that they
>>>> can recognise what is required.
>>>>
>>>> *Right answer, wrong approach*
>>>>
>>>> Two crucial aspects of studying effectively are not about “skills”
>>>> at all but about understanding. Research at Harvard University into
>>>> why its very bright students sometimes study in unintelligent ways
>>>> has revealed how important it is for students to understand the
>>>> nature of knowledge and what they are supposed to do with it.
>>>>
>>>> The study found that unsophisticated students would try to spot the
>>>> right answers in lectures, which they would note down in order to
>>>> memorise for a test, a method described in the literature by the
>>>> phrase “quantitative accretion of discrete rightness”. They were
>>>> fantastically efficient at this and it had served them well at
>>>> school, but it was the wrong thing to do at Harvard.
>>>>
>>>> Similarly, studies at the University of Gothenburg have revealed
>>>> that students have quite different conceptions of what “learning”
>>>> means, and these conceptions evolved through experience until,
>>>> ideally, learning is seen as attempting to “apprehend reality”.
>>>>
>>>> Skills have to serve the purposes associated with these evolving
>>>> conceptions of knowledge and of learning: without appropriate
>>>> purposes, the skills can be worse than useless.
>>>>
>>>> PRINT HEADLINE:
>>>>
>>>> Article originally published as: /Self-reflective improvement/ (30
>>>> May 2013)
>>>>
>>>> AUTHOR:
>>>>
>>>> Graham Gibbs is professor of higher education at the University of
>>>> Winchester.
>>>>
>>> --
>>> I work Mon-Thur at St George's
>>>
>>> Dr Janette Myers SFHEA
>>> Senior Lecturer in Student Learning and Support,
>>> Division of Population Health Sciences and Education,
>>> Section for Medical and Healthcare Education,
>>> 6th floor Hunter Wing,
>>> St George's, University of London
>>> Cranmer Terrace
>>> London
>>> SW17 0RE
>>>
>>> 020 8725 0616
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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